Sandman
by RoseWren
Summary: Dradis, an ironwilled lady pilot, struggles to maintain her faith in the face of a man's demons. Luke founds Yavin4. Rated for mature themes, language, and metaphors. Not a happy story but hopefully worth a read.
1. The Sandman

Chapter One: The Sandman

The dull, distant hum of engines was intoxicating, he thought, like Yavinese cocktails, only better. Sand, fine powdery stuff, blew through his fingers as he raised a hand to cover his face, trudging towards the X-wing. He never got over how the smell of the city excited him, the wild thrall of humanity that gripped him by the balls and pulled.

The golden-haired man dropped into the hatch of his ship, the whole vessel shuddering with the force of the gales of sand that buffeted it. Raking a hand through his hair, the pilot tried not to think of how drunk he was. The warmth of his blaster, tip still burning like an ember through its sheath, was an indelible bit of evidence however and he lifted the strap of his seat belt over his head and flicked on the preliminary gauges to prepare for take-off.

The pod screen flickered over his head and he cracked an eye open to watch the holo flicker and fuzz. "Sandman, this is the Falcon; do you read?"

"I read you, Han," Mumbled Luke and the rogue's face above him creased with concern.

"You're drunk!" Leia shoved herself into the screen, nose inches away and eyes narrowed. Luke grimaced and checked his fuel and external thermals.

"Yeah," He said, hands still moving at dials and switches. "But not drunk enough, obviously."

Leia looked alarmed for the split second before Han pushed her out of view, hands spelling out placating gestures. He turned back to the screen, "Okay kid, are you heading back to Base? Those Imps ain't gonna wait for you to get your ass in gear."

Luke dropped his head back and closed his eyes against the fluttering light of the sensors, laughing lowly, "Don't you ever get tired of it all? It's like one of those crappy holo-vid shoot-out games; shoot an Imp, reload, shoot, rinse and repeat. God, it's sick! Don't you ever try to steal just a second away? Just for you?"

Han stared back down at him, expression almost indiscernibly pained. "Listen kid, maybe we'd better get back to Base to have this conversation. You know, so we can sit down and think sane—the rattle and hum of the ship all by your lonesome..."

Luke tried not to look like he agreed, slumping forward to lean against his console. "I'm fine. Gimme a sec to get up in the air and I'll land with O1 for a spell to catch a couple of winks. I'll see you two back home."

Han nodded and Luke brushed a finger across the screen switch. It went dark, white blooming across the screen as it opened like a nova of white and faded into black, leaving him with the whistle of sand across as poor compensation for a human voice.

AN: Yes, short, I know. I'm really just testing the water for this genre. Another chapter should be up by tomorrow because I think I like it; bear with me. Please review!


	2. Dradis

Chapter Two: Dradis

Dradis halted in the open doorway, fingers still tying off the topmost row of zippers on her suit, the material clinging to her trim form and black glinting off its utilitarian lines, dull under the dim space lights.

"Kio, report!" The girl snapped to attention from her affected crouch over the hatch of the X-Wing, balancing lightly on the nose of the plane.

"Nothing to say here, Dradis. Looks like we've caught ourselves a Reb." Dradis nodded and raked her eyes over the ship, taking in fuel stains pooling underneath the ship and the marks of heavy fire scoring the wings.

"Is the pilot alive? Who authorized this? What time did we bring him in? Can you give me an estimate to the nature of his damages? Are there any pursuers?" The volley of questions was met with suppressed humor and a little smile dancing across the mechanic's lips.

"Yes; Verda; at approximately 1100 hours; minimal and mostly cosmetic; not that we can detect." Dradis nodded sharply and tugged the ladder over a step so she could see into the cockpit. A sandy-haired youth was slumped down in his seat, one arm flung over his face and the other trailing fingers along the floor.

"So he just knocked and we opened right up?" She asked, more of a rhetorical question than anything but Kio answered anyways.

"He sent out a distress call saying that he's been in a dogfight and sustained damage. I—" She cut herself off and Dradis looked at her sharply. "I think he was drunk but I can't be sure."

Her captain arched a brow at the unconscious youth and the mechanic winced; Dradis did not suffer fools. Period.

A moment of uncomfortable silence was broken by a crisp voice below them and Verda, the Captain's second-in-command, clambered up the steps. "What's this? Why isn't the boy with Janis already? It looks like he took a nice knock to the head."

Dradis gave her a curt nod and looked at Kio expectantly who, realizing her superiors' utter incompetence in ships, flipped over onto her stomach and shimmied along between the extended wings until she reached the droid's pocket. Fumbling around, she gestured to a screw driver and Dradis slid it to her wordlessly.

The airlock undid with an intake of breath but the boy didn't stir and the trio frowned and gathered round, peering down. The cockpit was sour, smelling uncomfortably of unwashed bodies and musk.

Verda sighed as she watched, pressing a hand under his collarbone for a pulse.

"He's alive," She said doubtfully, sweeping his hair back and tipping his head up. Deftly she levered open his eye lids with a thumb and forefinger to observe the pupils, checked his pulse again, counting, and then laid his hand on his lap. "Suffering, I think, from a minor concussion but I'm no medic. We should get him to the bay."

The captain said nothing, only ushered Verda down the ladder and took a firm grip on the pilot's wrists and tugged him over her shoulders. Grunting with the effort, she navigated down the rungs and deposited him into one of the wheeled trash bins, its contents blessedly little.

Verda and Kio traded a smile as their captain wheeled the boy away, shared amusement flashing between them. Their captain was not known for her kindness; it would be interesting to see how this episode played out.


	3. Awake

Chapter 3:

The youth's sandy blonde hair swayed in the artificial wind that blew through the sick bay, and Dradis smoothed it back, watching her hand with a sick fascination. Done with the motion, it lay limp on the starched linen, devoid of any more unsettling tendencies. Moth snatched it up, nose twitching as he turned it over in his tiny paws. His tail curled possessively around it once he was finished, dropping it to begin once more plaiting knots in her hair.

The healer chuckled into her cuff and Dradis shot her an accusatory glare, one to which the healer only grinned, asking innocently, "Reticent motherly tendencies surfacing at last, dear?"

"Kiss off," Dradis said, though without any real rancor and, after a moment, giving a rueful grimace. "It's just you, Magdra."

Magdra shrugged, still smiling as she began compiling patient notes on her datapad, "Of course."

* * *

Thoughts were uncomfortable company to keep, but dreams were even worse. 

He was back in Java's pit, darkness pressing in like a blanket over his face, stifling breath and tuning thought to a shrill panic-whine. It was okay though, somehow, because he'd already done this before, hadn't he? There was no way he could die and—

A chair scraped on the floor beside him and Luke awoke with a start. His every sense strained out, stretching, sweeping over everything in the room as fast as his mind could process: he was clean, suspended on space cot in a room that smelled of antiseptics and a chemical cleanliness; there was a woman beside him, five foot ten and one hundred and fifty-five pounds; there was another entity, too, that watched him warily from the doorway and somehow boggled his Jedi ability to describe. He was safe it seemed, and, grimacing inwardly, Luke set his mind to remembering exactly how he had managed to land himself in this one.

The woman medic and he slitted his eyes to look at her, sight adjusting painfully to the hard glare of the space lights. Her tall, long-limbed form was graceful in repose but never the less managed to exude a capableness that marked her clearly, along with the medic's costume. The curly, frizzy mass that fell over her shoulders was the yellowing hue of Tatoine sand but her face was wholly unremarkable, big-boned and with eyes the color of sun-baked rock.

She turned away from him, bending her head over a datapad resting on the table and scribbling something on it.

"Magdra?"Another woman stirred in a chair, head tilted back and eyes closed.

"Patient's awake, Dradis." The medic placed a steaming cup by the other woman's hand, then tapped her on the shoulder.

The woman roused herself fully then, rising up in a swift movement to walk to Luke's bedside and pausing to give him an icy once over, "Oh? I see."

She was a hard looking woman, with a face all planes and angles drawing into an uncompromising jaw, blade-like nose, and narrow chin. His gaze flickered over her features and, to her obvious displeasure, was drawn unerringly to a generous mouth that gave her face a certain whimsy even underneath her flinty gaze. Her light hair was scraped severely away into a long braid that draped over her shoulder and was currently in the capacity of providing the creature in her arms an amusing chew toy.

Gnawing contentedly, the creature was oblivious to Luke's careful observation. It was clearly an undeveloped humanoid but of a strain he'd never before encountered and aside from the vaguely amphibian look to it, it could have been best termed a 'monkey.' As he stared, it gave a chirp and delighted gurgle as Dradis absently flicked her hair to hang over her other shoulder.

"Luke Skywalker, Jedi, pilot of starfighter XX50112," The Captain drew a palm-sized computer out of the pocket of her spacesuit and inserted a chip. "It says here that this is registered to the New Republic. Interesting."

She read on for a few moments, creature in her arms handled with an ease born of long practice, and then closed the machine with a decisive snap. "Well? What can you say for yourself?"

"I appreciate what you've done for me, really I do. My friends can pay you—" Luke stopped as the Captain made an impatient slash with her hand.

"I'm really not interested in the least in your credits or your friends. Why in the hells were you driving in a known hotbed of Imperial activity, _drunk?" _She glared and crossed her arms, exhaling a wordless articulation of her scorn for idiots with pilots' licenses. Luke winced inwardly and resolved himself to stoic silence.

Dradis gave him a long, hard look before spinning on her heel and walked a few paces to whisper in the other woman's ear. Luke's sharp ears caught only the smallest breath passing from one to the other, "Watch him, Magdra. I don't trust him."

"Be nice," Magdra said, not raising her eyes from her datapad. Dradis paused on her way only to pick up the steaming cup, then left.

AN--Thank you guys so much for your patience and sorry it took me so long to update!


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